From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] How about some software?
From: rog@vitanuova.com
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Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 19:35:39 +0100
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rob writes:
> type is text
> data matches '(https?|ftp|file|gopher|mailto|news|nntp|telnet|wais|prospero)://[a-zA-Z0-9_@\-]+([.:][a-zA-Z0-9_@\-]+)*/?[a-zA-Z0-9_?,%#~&/\-+=]+([:.][a-zA-Z0-9_?,%#~&/\-+=]+)*'

i've been using a similar rule for a while now; my rule looks like:

achar='[a-zA-Z0-9_+@]'
qchar='[a-zA-Z0-9_?,%!#~&.=@+/\-;]'
type is text
data matches '(https?|ftp|file|gopher|mailto|news|nntp|telnet|wais|prospero)://'$achar'+([.:]'$achar'+)*/?'$qchar'+([:.]'$qchar'+)*'

which covers some cases the former doesn't (and probably doesn't cover
some it does). i'll leave merging the two as an exercise for the reader.
it's been a looong day.